Look what I discovered today.
Anyone have experience with leaf spring sources?
I'll probably opt for salvage yard springs .... IF they have anything better than mine but here in the rust belt the salvage yard stuff aint great.

www.espo.com They have a great reputation. Not sure if they do truck stuff tho, but I'd start there first.

I'll see that, and raise you two...

Well, I almost have the problem solved. Went to local salvage yard and all the trucks were missing the springs, I then looked at Ramchargers but they were all 4-wheel drive and had 5/8" bolts through the spring eyes instead of 1/2" bolts like my 2-wheel drive truck. ( and those springs did not look much better than what I already had). Then one of the yard guys remembered about a 1986 truck out "behind the barn" so I took a look. Wow, super nice rust free (for Minnesota) frame and suspension !!!
So I bought the whole frame with rear springs and front suspension for $250 + sales tax. Is that a good buy or not?

They will remove the all the other parts from the frame and let me know when it is ready for me. Now next spring I can swap all my good parts over to the nice frame. Meanwhile still need a spring (or the main leaf) to get me through the winter with this old truck.

$250 for a good chassis sounds like a screaming deal to me.

For new springs, check out:

JCWhitney

I am still trying to figure out how the painted sheet metal fared so much better than the undercoated (at some point) frame/chassis....

-S/6

Hey S/6,
I was wondering when someone was going to notice and ask about that!

The original box got quite rusty some years ago and I happened upon a rust free box at an auction for $25.00, yes only $25. It had both rear corners below the tail lights smashed in but that was a whole lot better than my rusted through box with both sides flopping around and ready to fall apart.

Now here's the really good part.... some kid ran a stop sign before I swapped on the new box and plowed into the side of the old rusty box. Their generous insurance company paid me $400 more than I had originally paid for the truck in the first place. Anyway, that helped pay a body guy to patch up the bent corners on the "new" box and repaint it to match the rest of the truck.

Hey, aren't you the guy who was going to mail me the ESA module from your 87 truck?

Yes, I just browsed JCWhitney last evening and see they had springs for $90 each.


-Craig-

Yep. As a matter of fact, I thought about it last night while cleaning up the VSS to trans section of my old (stock) throttle cable. I need to pull the computer off the shelf and clean it up.

Do you need the electrical connectors? The entire harness is no longer complete, but I can salvage the connectors with ~one foot of wire for each pin for easy splicing.

The VSS is frozen on the lower speedo cable. Kroil didn't even make it budge.

PM me your address and I should be able to get the computer, VSS & lower cable, and connectors (if needed) out this weekend.

-S/6